WASHINGTON: In a remark that has
caused resentment and mortification among many Pakistanis, a
Pakistani-American
community leader has said Pakistanis are posing as Indians in the US to
escape
discrimination.
''A lot of Pakistanis can't get jobs after 9/11 and
now it's even worse,'' Asghar Choudhri, an accountant and chairman of
Brooklyn's
Pakistani American Merchant Association was quoted as telling a wire
service on
Friday in the aftermath of the failed
Times Square bombing.
''They are now
pretending they are Indian so they can get a job.''
The comment has
angered some Pakistanis. ''I’d rather be called a terrorist than an
Indian,'' one Pakistani blogger fumed, even as the American media was
filled
with self-lacerating laments from Pakistani-Americans about their future
in the
US.
Although they were generally as well-regarded in the past as
Indian immigrants, coming as they do from similar upper-middle-class
backgrounds
with professional career yearnings, the reputation of Pakistanis has
lately been
undermined by multiple terrorist plots across the world, most of them
traced
back to Pakistan. Permissive military-dominated governments have been
accused of
allowing foreigners and emigrants with extremist impulses to scout for
terror
training in what is now being referred to in intelligence circles as
''jihadi
tourism.''
The case of Faisal Shahzad, now dubbed the ''idiot
bomber,'' was preceded by those involving Richard Reid the ''shoe
bomber,'' Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab the ''undie bomber,'' Daniel Pearl stalker Omar
Saeed
Sheikh, the London metro bombers, paintball jihadists from Virginia,
truck and
cab drivers Najibullah Zazi from Denver and Raja Lahrasib Khan from
Chicago, all
of them involved in terror plots that typically has a Pakistan
connection.
The Pakistani trail goes back even further to the early
1990s, well before the Osama bin Laden/Khalid Sheikh Mohammed inspired
9/11
tragedy, when World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and CIA shooter Mir
Aimal
Kansi emerged from the country’s badlands to inflict the first terrorist
attacks on mainland America.
Pakistanis in the US are now
experiencing the blowback for their homeland’s permissive track record
of
terrorism that has long been an Indian grievance.
Earlier this week,
a Pakistani-American complained that a manager at a suburban
home-improvement
store prevented him from buying two bags of fertilizer for his family's
lawn.
Farhan, who was identified by a single name by a news agency, said
police
arrived soon after, investigated and allowed him to buy the
fertilizer.
''What kind of a country are we living in when a
22-year-old male can't buy fertilizer?'', the Virginia-born
Pakistani-American
asked. ''I'm American. I'm not Pakistani.'' Farhan said the store had
subsequently apologized.
Other Pakistani-Americans have spoken about
how on learning of the Times Square incident, their first instinct was
to pray
that it was not a Pakistani or a Muslim.
''Sometimes, I long for the
blurry cultural identities of the 80s, when elementary school friends
lumped all
Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and Egyptian immigrants in one
brown-hued
bucket: "India." Who wouldn't rather be affiliated with Slumdog
Millionaire,
Metro PCS's Ranjit and Chad, Chicken Tikkah Masala, Bhangra remixes and
Bollywood instead of religious extremism and Al Qaeda?'' writer Wajahat
Ali said
in another lament on Salon.
The Pakistani discomfiture has delighted
some Indians who have made no secret of their happiness on various
online fora,
dissecting Pakistan's existential dilemmas.
But a prominent Pakistani
commentator cautioned against such schadenfreude.
''Indian
opportunism in terms of painting Pakistanis as the problem is un-Indian
&
self-defeating. When we get profiled, YOU get profiled,'' Mosharraf
Zaidi, a US
based political economist, warned.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Pakistanis-are-posing-as-Indians-to-escape-discrimination/articleshow/5907956.cms
